How Inequality Hobbles Military Power

Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine, along with unexpectedly dogged Ukrainian resistance, has sparked a debate about whether the current ways of measuring military capabilities are flawed. Indeed, U.S. intelligence analysts have been shocked by the rapid disintegration of the Afghan military in 2021, the collapse of Iraqi units in the face of the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS) in 2014, and Ethiopia’s shambolic performance against Tigrayan rebels in the last two years. U.S. analysts correctly predicted that Russia would invade in February, but their assumption that Ukraine would fall in a matter of days has only fueled the perception that something is amiss in how the intelligence community thinks about and measures military power. Prodded by angry lawmakers, the U.S. intelligence community has launched a sweeping internal review of how it assesses foreign military power amid its missteps in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and elsewhere.